Use Your Life to Benefit Others
Rinpoche recommended many practices and also social service in this advice for a new student.
My very dear one,
Thank you for your kind letter, and I’m very sorry for the many eons of delay in replying. Please find attached all the practices that come out best for your quickest enlightenment.
It comes out very good for you to do Vajrasattva retreat.
Generally, it comes out very good to do some social service. This does not specifically mean in a hospital or with children, but using your life to benefit others. It could be offering service at the center, as you are, teaching Dharma, guiding meditations, and helping in this way.
So, please practice as much as you can, life is not long, the nature of this life is impermanent, and death can happen at any time. This is the foundation of the Buddha’s teachings, and this was the last advice Buddha gave, before showing the aspect of passing away.
Please make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa
- Refuge: 30,000
- Prostrations: 100,000, reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas
- Vajrasattva: 100,000
- Dorje Khadro (burning offering): 200,000
- Water bowl offerings: 50,000
- Guru Yoga: It is important to do one each day, such as Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga
- Tsa-tsas: Amitabha: 40,000 (divide between the two deities), and Tara
- Please read the Golden Light Sutra a little each day, with one or two lines or more. Continue like this.
- You can do a three-year retreat in the future. Try to plan for a three-year retreat on your deity, if the conditions come together.
- OM MANI PADME HUM recitations
- The four immeasurable thoughts: Recite the prayer 10,000 times and meditate on the meaning, and recite the tonglen prayer 10,000 times.